The Naked Ride Home

There are three questions to answer regarding this song. They all come in its last two lines:

"Like the truth that would eventually dawn" (what truth?) "Forcing me to decide" (between what? and what do we think he will decide?)

Using what we know of both characters from the earlier lyrics gets us at an answer.

The truth is this: "I need to break up with this girl." He's already living with her, so we know they're already in a relationship (notice they share a house). But it's just not working. This truth is bitter; he's reluctant to break up with her, but deep down, he knows its the only way.

Why is he reluctant? He's strongly attracted to her beauty (and possibly her happiness and carefree attitude). But he is also aware that the relationship cannot succeed, for at least two reasons. One is that she has some flaw in her character. Her beauty is "so misleading," suggesting that her external beauty is not reflective of her inner self.

The second reason is that she is not attracted to him as he is to her. She turns aside his caress, his heart beats alone, and she seems to doubt his potential ("as if I was the doubting one who would have to be shown").

The profoundness of his struggle is evidenced by the song's construction. It leaves on a point of tension, rather than resolution--he hasn't made a decision, but he is being pressed into one. It's also shown by the verse's construction. It starts with a "but," as if it contrasts from the rest of what the song presents. You can almost hear the struggle in his head when he starts to reflect on how he needs to break up with her...but then he remembers the night on the freeway. It's also significant that the song's final words are from this conflicted chorus, even when the last we hear of him is his being forced into a decision because of a truth that's dawning on him.

The last point I'd like to make is that Browne does an awesome job illustrating these characters by keeping her focus on the present and the physical (naked beauty, running, etc) and his on the past and future and mental (metaphors, images, ideas of paradise).

i heard jackson say this song is regarding the political stands he has taken - he is using the reference to a girl as a political point of view

I have heard Jackson to say this song was about vulnerability and trust. That taking off her clothes represents a "nakedness" of the soul that few are willing to share/bare. Her beauty was misleading to him because inside, "underneath it all" she felt empty and unloved -- but she showed her beauty, inside and out, and her heart, only to him and he took advantage of it, knowing he no longer could love her the way she wanted but he was not able to commit and he lets her go... her heart beating alone.

Nice entries. As the previous writers note, the literal meaning is quite obvious and not just about this naked ride he remembers having taken with someone (did it really happen?), but he comes to some kind of revelation/realization about this relationship. I always assumed it had to do with one of his personal relationships, maybe even with the wife who committed suicide. But the political analogy is intriguing. I'll have to think about that!

Love and loss, with a side of comedy...that's Jackson's realm.

When interviewed on this album’s release, Jackson said it was about the end of a marriage. He has to decide to leave the marital home or? There are clues in the lyrics leading up to this point: “the heart beating alone”, “turning aside my caress”, “spoke of all she’d not yet done”. I found the initial premise very exciting but after the realisation that the marriage was over, quite sad.

I never felt like the couple in the song were married, or were even in a relationship (I know about his interview, yes). So even though Browne may have not intended is this way...

It reminded me a lot of how girls and boys cross paths in high school. It sounds like so many "non-relationships" I have known from that time, both involving me and just involving friends. The guy is pursuing a girl, she doesn't care about him and she doesn't care that he is enamored with her. She took the dare purely because it was a dare. She has no emotional connection to it and couldn't care less that he sees her naked in the car. She just wants to be able to say she has done it. In fact, it's almost insulting to him because she has absolutely no fear that he will do anything agressive toward her. She sees him as a puppet. and yet... he tries because he's "too far gone to care". That idea continues in the line where she brushes aside his caress and speaks of "all that she'd not yet done"). She knows he wants her, but feels no obligation to respond to it or even acknowledge it, because it's more fun to keep stringing him along.

They get to her house, where she bolts from the car without a word, as if to say, "Well, I've done that. See ya." And he is left to see her turning on the lights. The "light that would eventually dawn" is him waking up to the fact that she will never care about him and he's letting her make a fool of him. "Forcing me to decide" just means he has to decide to stop waiting for her to want him, because it's never going to happen.